MEMORY IMAGES, MIRROR IMAGES

“Memory images, mirror images” is a collection of short films created from archive footages made available by the French National Audiovisual Institute. These films were made in shared creation workshops uniting professional filmmakers and amateur participants. They got appropriated archival images to restore, through the fictional writing, a part of their personal history and their look.
This project was developed over five years, from 2009 to 2013, in prison, with groups of detainees, and outside with students, adults, elderly people… It was developed over the territory of the PACA region (Aix-en-Provence, Avignon , Marseille and Martigues) and also in Europe and around the Mediterranean area (Germany, Spain , Italy, Lebanon and Norway).

Filmmaking process

Each year, filmmakers involved in the project determined a common selection of archival footages around different topics. These images were shared and worked with all participants, from a common rule of the game. Participants aroused two questions: which look do I have on the archival images? How these images echo my own story?
The films were made by groups of two persons. Meetings were organized between different groups, whether inside(in film workshops in prison) or outside. Participants lived an artistic but also human experience by meeting other groups and exploring other territories. They wondered together on what they could invent and share.
Create from the INA archives remains to get confronted to a collective memory and heritage: our history. The films put beside the personal trajectories of participants with the great events of our world. Accepting to dive one’s own look of the archive is discovering oneself among others. The memory-image becomes mirror-image.

A short films exhibition, collection and DVD

More than 250 films were made during these five years of workshop. The first important dissemination time took place in June and July 2013, with the short films exhibition “Memory images, mirror images” organized in la Friche la Belle de Mai in Marseille, as part of the official program of Marseille-Provence 2013, European Capital of Culture. A selection of 36 short films was presented in the beautiful space called “Cabaret Aléatoire”, a concert hall transformed into an exhibition area for the occasion. The second highlight was the creation of the collection “Memory images, mirror images” and the screening of the films in many cinema areas.
A DVD-book brings together the 36 films that composed the exhibition and presents the method invented to conduct the workshops in a transmission desire, as well as the testimonies of some actors of this collective adventure. Therefore this edition offers a journey through the collective history and individual memories. Each author renews the meaning of the archive footages he/she uses. It is a personal and artistic look at the history and images that is offered, often without concession. “But what?” Chris Marker was making her actress say in “Sans Soleil “: “History only tastes bitter to those who expected it to be sugar coated”. These films make us wondering about our relationship to images, to history and to the Other.

MEMORY IMAGES, MIRROR IMAGES 2016-2018FILM EDUCATION NATIONAL DEVICE FOR PEOPLE WITH DIFFICULTIES TO ACCESS TO CULTURE, SUPPORTED BY THE CNC

In partnership with the association Resonance Culture, Lieux Fictifs offers in 2015 to the French National Film Centre (CNC) and the National Audiovisual Institute (INA) to develop a new film education device, from the original experience conducted from 2008 to 2013, intended for three kind of audiences: young minors under youth judicial protection, prisoners and people in precarious situation.

This new shared creation device using archive footages is part of a desire to work with these audiences on their relationship to the image. Tested in three pilot regions (Ile de France, Nord Pas de Calais, Provence Alpes Côte d’Azur) in 2016, at medium-term, this device is called upon to be deployed in other French regions.